


The Dread Wolf Rises

by IrLaimsaAraLath



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 03:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrLaimsaAraLath/pseuds/IrLaimsaAraLath
Summary: Inspired by the mural from the teaser.





	The Dread Wolf Rises

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what's up with the ending. I think I had it in my mind to make it a little ambiguous as to what really happened, if Solas was hallucinating or not. I'm not sure I got that across well, however.

The morning is ruddy -- clouds of smoke tinged crimson crowd a sky made umber by flame and ash. The sun is nowhere to be seen, though it is surely there, struggling to pierce the heavy curtain of detritus that hangs before it. It is both acrid and hot, the air. Every lungful is scalding, sulfurous, and stifling. Every all-too-brief breeze chased by soot and sweltering. His grey-blue eyes sting, open wide despite the burn that gathers tears on his lower lash line. Vision blurred, he dares not blink, only stares unerringly forward.

From across the field, the Dread Wolf gazes back. Its figure rises against the fire-lit sky like a bank of thunderheads -- dark and deep, bruised and wounded, black lips skinned back from blacker fangs in a silent snarl. His stare is met threefold, each baleful scarlet eye fixed with singular focus. Though all is chaos before him and in his wake, Solas harbors a disquieting calm at the center of his chest that is reflected in his neutral expression.

It would be slanderous to call it peace, however; never was such stillness borne out of so much destruction. More to the point, he is resigned, accepting, devoted to his course with the most solemn of convictions. Any and all things that might dissuade him have been banished, relinquished, and set aside. He harbors not even vain hope now. And, though his heart still beats, it does not live; it died with _her_.

Perhaps it was always folly on his part to attempt to preserve her until the very last. To want to give her all the time he could so that she might yet wring some happiness out of life. He can't be certain if it was more insulting to her or himself that he expected she would give up on their love. On trying to save him. She never had, and she paid for her perseverance with her life. In the heat of battle, her identity mistaken, it had been his own magic that had struck her down.

She died in his arms, with her devotion to him on her lips, her forgiveness in her final breath. That seemed like an age ago -- a different world, a different life. Existence now was so grim and dark that her light had no place in it. And, so, it was easier for him to do what he must. To imagine that this fate was inevitable. To surrender to it and let what must be come to pass.

Another deep breath of the caustic air finds him ready to unleash the future. The burn in his lungs reminds him change is always painful, but frequently necessary. That the world that rises from the ashes of its predecessor will be as ever it should have been. He lifts his hand, reaching for the power veiled in the smoke, hidden in the flames, poised to undo and remake the world. That is when he hears footsteps.

His ears prick, but he doesn't turn, his focus engaged, and he begins to siphon off his energy. Diverts it from his body and funnels it out, forward, to the vessel that hangs shrouded in the sooty air. At his back, a subtle wind stirs, and it buffets him with a cool breath, fragrant and unmarred by the ruin about him. Before he can help himself, he breathes it in, greedily, ravenously like a parched man gulps water. And all at once, his energy snaps back into his body with enough force that he is rocked back a few staggered steps.

“No,” he hears himself whisper, eyes lidding as his head falls. “No, you are dead.”

“Am I, though?” he hears a familiar voice whisper in return. A voice lost for so many years. He cannot turn as the crunch of footfalls near. He can feel it now, her energy; it radiates outward from her and across his back, slipping over his shoulders. His hands begin to tremble. “I watched you die,” his voice forlorn and small, eyes opening to gaze at his hands as if he could still see her blood dripping through his fingers.

The caress of energy over him and around him becomes solid in the body that presses into his back, in the arm that winds beneath his own to embrace him, hand flat on his chest. His gaze shifts, settling on the pale, slender fingers that smooth over his breastplate to thread into wolf fur across his chest. His eyes flutter as a deep and abiding ache blossoms beneath his ribs.

“I once saw you ravaged by red lyrium, dying and determined to save the world from an unthinkable fate,” she replies, fingers curling in the fur, cheek resting between his shoulder blades. “And yet, here you are.” Solas finds it exceptionally hard to breathe now for reasons separate from the scalding ash in the air. He can't look at her hand any longer, so he turns his head, and from the corner of his eye, he sees a shock of white hair. Tendrils whipped and tugged by the overheated breeze, strands of it brush his cheek.

“Vhenan,” he manages to hoarsely whisper as his legs wobble and give way, the weight of reality bearing him to his knees in the dirt. His hands catch him, his head falls, his fingers become claws in the sandy earth. He still doesn't believe it when her touch slips beneath his chin, when she lifts his face. Eyes clenched tight, he cannot, dares not, but her skin is cool and soft against his cheek.

“Solas, my slow arrow, my Fen’Harel,” he hears her say, and he tries to turn his face out of her hand. To see her again, he would be undone. It would all be undone. But, she holds him steady, and when she speaks again, her voice is against his ear, her lips tickling. “Ma lath, open your eyes,” and he does, helplessly, his red-rimmed grey-blue gaze falling immediately on her face. His throat seizes painfully when he finds his eyes met with viridian, a gentle color for a tender gaze that holds him so carefully.

“You're here,” he hears himself choke out, voice broken and weak, and his wretched hands blindly fumble forward to find her booted feet. Desperation has set in, and he paws at her legs, upward, finally clutching at the lapels of her coat to pull her, drag her down to his level. There's still a smile on her lips when she is on her knees in the dirt with him, when his hands fall heavy on her shoulders to steady himself. He still has to ask, “Niyera?” The syllables are as frantic as his eyes, inspecting every inch of her face for assurances of her identity, of her presence, of her realness.

He only notices he is weeping when her hand settles aside his face and her thumb sweeps through the clean tracks the tears have run through the dust on his cheeks. “Yes, ma lath, vhenan. I'm here.” His breath leaves him in an explosive burst as he lurches toward her, pulls her into his chest. She is solid in his arms, warm and true and real, and she clutches at his fur, her face nestled against his neck. He loses track of how long he holds her, of the apologies and the pledges he makes. And it is only when he's lost his voice to his sorrowed relief that he pulls back, just enough, to find her lips with his own.

The kiss is a fraught thing. Gritty and tender, feverish and lingering. She tastes just as he remembers, and her skin is still perfumed with blackberry and sage. She is the sweetest of all things. Breathless, they part, bowing forehead to forehead in the dirt. Her hand is clasped at the nape of his neck, and both of his are threaded through her niveous hair. This could be his forever. He could dwell here, unwanting, for the rest of his days. There have been so many mistakes he's made that he could never undo, but somehow, this one had unraveled on its own.

Her breath is warm on his lips, and her hand slides to cradle the crown of his head. “You must come with me, Solas. This...this is not the way,” she urges before pressing her lips to his brow. “Let me show you.” Her words are little more than a breath against the skin of his forehead, his cheeks, his chapped lips. And, he shakes with the want to believe her. His eyes open, settle on her face, then pan upward toward the vessel hung abandoned in the sky, just beyond the veil of smoke. The touch of her hand guides his gaze back to hers, steady and sure. He can only nod mutely as she helps him find his feet, his eyes fixed to her, his hand securely in hers.

She turns him from the great chasm that divides him from the Dread Wolf, the flames and ruin, the precipice of destruction. Turns him and draws him with her, as easily led as a child as he leaves the chaos behind. From out of the banks of smoke that obscure the cliff, the violet whorl of a portal becomes visible. She smiles back at him, squeezes his hand. He doesn't look back before he steps through.

As the portal spins closed behind him, a shattering howl rises into the flame-dimmed sky. It stirs the wind, causing it to whip through the valley and up the sheer cliff wall. Atop the now-abandoned precipice, a misshapen column of ash is hunkered low to the ground, vaguely humanoid in shape -- it has hands that reach, a face downturned, knees buried in the sandy earth. Crimson pulses behind the veil of the sooty air as the wind rises, lashing at the high ledge. It tugs at the loose figure of ash, coaxing away bits and pieces that rise into the air like sullen butterflies. Wan and grey, weak and fleeting.

The Dread Wolf continues to howl across the breach, and it slowly deepens and echoes. In accompaniment comes the hum of a discordant song from within the smoke, and beneath, a sound like the brittle cracking of glass becomes the percussion in the cacophony of maligned dissonance. Veins of crimson fracture the veil of soot in the air, fracturing the depthless grey, and it abruptly explodes. Shards of scarlet pierce the air, bombard the cliff face, scatter the ashen figure like so much dust in the wind. Even the howl of the Dread Wolf is swept up and away, and naught is left in the wake of the cataclysm but ruin and despair.

 

 


End file.
